How Abusers Manipulate

Abusers and manipulators lead you to draw your own conclusions, making you feel that you figured out something on your own.

 By leading you to draw your own conclusions, then you became a voluntary participant in their manipulation. It is thus becomes not their fault at all, it becomes your doing.

You need also to understand the difference between being tactful in order to be a mensch and spare someone's feelings, and bending the truth because you are in fear of the manipulator's anger and consequences that they may mete out, including threats of deprivation or public embarrassment.

Being tactful is a wonderful thing to do. But if you find yourself inventing white lies and spending energy bending the truth because you fear the other's expression of anger and its consequences, then you are being manipulated.

Here are some real life examples:

A harried sounding school administrator calls the mother of a child at their school, "your ex husband told us that you do not send her report cards to him, his lawyers sent us a copy of your divorce agreement and we consulted our lawyers who concluded that he has a right to the report card, so we will be sending a copy to him from now on."

See how this administrator had already drawn a conclusion without hearing the mother's side.

The mother responded, "ok, fine." and the conversation ended there.

Note how the administrator did not even try an easier route, like just calling the mother directly and saying "hey, your ex wants a copy of the report card sent directly from the school, is that okay?"

But the administrator, who was normally a nice woman, expressed the signs of having been manipulated - she sounded harried, and she did not give the other side a chance to speak. She also did not show any tact to the mother, in telling the mother how the admin of that school and its lawyers were involved.

The ex husband had succeeded in embarrassing his ex wife. It was mental abuse by proxy. 

The mother wisely just said "okay" and did not offer her view or in any way say anything that could escalate the situation. Even if she had said, "but I do send him a copy of the report card", which was true, that could have escalated the situation, as it would have thrown doubt upon the ex husband's truthfulness and the school administration's professionalism.

Here is another example:

A divorced single mother remarries a man who lovingly helps raise her daughter from her first marriage.

The daughter tactfully downplays her step father's role in her life when she visits her biological father. Over the years, she lets him believe that the step father is a minor character in her life.  This is in response to her biological father's expression of curiosity about her life and her sixth sense that she should be tactful.

Then the biological father hears that his daughter wishes to attend the stepfather's birthday celebration. He also hears his daughter's son refer to the stepfather as "saba", which is Hebrew for "grandfather".

The biological grandfather is referred to by the Yiddish "zaide", so different words were used for each grandfather. The third grandfather, that is, the father of the husband, was referred to in the English "grandpa". 

Should the biological father respond with a heartfelt wish that he hopes he is still appreciated even though his daughter wishes to attend the celebration, and hopes he is not being supplanted in the grandson's mind by the step father, that would be fine.

But a disturbing expression of anger in the form of a harsh facial expression, tone of voice, and adding, "you have no other saba, I am the saba, I will be angry if you call him saba!" to a child, with the mother under stress in trying to figure out how to placate the biological father....that crosses the line from the call for tact to the need to recognize abusiveness.